Wildlife Interactions

Sunday we spent the afternoon at my parents. Chase found a beautiful monarch butterfly. It was on it's last legs. It seemed like it didn't even have the energy to hold up its wings. My dad explained to Chase that this is the cycle of life and this poor butterfly was old and tired and was getting ready to pass on. Chase gently put it on a potted plant on the deck and watched it for a while. He wasn't convinced it was going to keel over immediately because he came in and cheerily stated that it was still hungry because he saw it uncurl its proboscis. I said, "It's what?" I am not educated in the names of the parts of the butterfly unlike my 3rd grader. Anyway. It was neat to be able to look back at our pictures of the monarch catapillers we found around Labor Day -

And know that they will turn into one of these beautiful creatures. Here's the one Chase found on Sunday -

On another note. MacGregor and Ainsley had been playing army men in my parents basement and had a whole battlefield set up. Later in the day my father told MacG to set up his army men outside on the patio (they have a walkout basement). My dad was reading out there in his glider chair. MacG did just that and set up his base and men in little groups all over the patio. He left them outside while we ate dinner. After dinner, we heard my dad yelling to MacGregor to "Come quick!" Apparently an enemy squirrel had surrounded the base, sniffed the soldiers, picked up a hostage with his paws, put him in his mouth and carried him away. By the time we got down there the enemy was gone. I told MacGregor he needed to put together a recon.team and rescue the poor hostage soldier. Although we weren't sure where the enemy squirrel had gone or what he wanted with our soldier. We didn't see him again that afternoon. We hope they are treating our soldier well.

AINSLEYISMS

We also had a few Ainsleyisms on Sunday -

1. She asked my mother why she had dirty bananas. (Sitting on the counter in my mother's kitchen were some very ripe and spotted bananas.)

2. She asked my dad, "Papaw, do you want to watch me have a hiccup?" (what else could he say but Yes, of course.)

3. Tonight I asked Ainsley what she wanted for dinner. She didn't answer at first so I said, "What IS your favorite dinner?" She responded - Chicken Bones. (What she means by this is fried chicken - we had KFC for dinner last Saturday for Daniel's birthday. She absolutely loves KFC's fried chicken. The chicken she normally eats is boneless and this chicken comes on the bone)